


38th Parallel North

by Mr_Crocodile



Series: On the shoulders of Titans [11]
Category: Godzilla - All Media Types, Pulgasari(1985), Yongary Monster from the Deep
Genre: AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Kaiju, Korean Characters, War, alternative history, korea - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29905614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Crocodile/pseuds/Mr_Crocodile
Summary: Divided they stood.Divided they sought control over what cannot be controlled.Divided they fell.
Series: On the shoulders of Titans [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990825
Comments: 12
Kudos: 5





	38th Parallel North

**Author's Note:**

> I've been interested in telling you all about Korea's fate this setting's timeline for a while and I finally got to explore it, it was real fun!  
> Hopefully you readers will have as much fun reading as I did writing!

**27th of July, 2008  
** **Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea**

He had fled.

Of course he had fled.

Ye Yong-Joon wasn’t a coward, or at least didn’t consider himself one. He was a cautious man, a rule abiding citizen, a good soldier. And like the good and cautious man he was, he had fled at the first sign of bad news. He didn’t have that many aspirations in life: Finishing his service on the people’s army, getting a good enough job back on his home city of Kusong and finding a wife. Nothing big, nothing worth writing about, a simple and honest life like the one his older siblings had already attained. The kind of exemplary life the party was always raving about.

But in order to have a modest life, he had reasoned to himself that day, one must first and foremost _stay alive_. Which was why he had thrown his rifle aside after the first explosion and climbed up into the trunk of the first truck filled with like-minded individuals he had found. “Thieves and deserters, cowards even” his superiors would have called them… He prefered not thinking about it.

They hadn’t really spoken about their destination; there had been no reason too. With the threat to their North, their only option was the Bimujang Jidae. It was a slim chance, they knew that, but it was better than trying their luck heading East, or the even crazier one that was the idea of staying and fighting.

They hadn’t been the only ones to have the idea of course, in the hours after the beast had escaped its bindings a veritable avalanche of civilians and deserters had made their way in any way possible towards the demilitarized zone. The few roads connecting the two halves of the peninsula were clogged with abandoned cars, their drivers having chosen to continue on foot. 

As they too abandoned their truck, the group quickly dissolved and Ye lost track of all the others in mere minutes. They didn’t know each other, they didn’t care about each other, they simply had found themselves boarding the same truck with the same plan.

Ye knew of the stories told about the DMZ, how Southern deserters were shot on the back by their cowardly comrades while their side did likewise with their own deserters. He hoped that, given the situation, guards on both sides would be more lenient.

As he continued his way through the badly maintained road and the crowd got thicker, he noticed how desperation drove people towards the wrong decisions. People walking off-road, probably wanting to try their luck crossing through the lightly forested areas and meandering rivers of the border. He didn’t get why, as desperate as they were, they must have realized it just meant taking more risks on the way across only to make themselves seem more suspicious once they were found on the other side. 

As it were, the mob made its way closer and closer to the true challenge: the Panmunjon, the Truce village, a small area straddling the demarcation line and managed jointly by both sides. His best chance at a safe crossing.

He noticed from the corner of his eye a woman carrying a bundle on her arms. She was fleeing like him, she was short, the distressed mob jostled her around, she fell.

The bundle started crying.

He almost knelt to help her, he considered doing so for a few seconds. 

But then he felt it, a rumbling so deep that his bones felt it before the sound reached his ears, a deep, bull-like bellowing which silenced the crowd for a second before everyone started running with renewed fear-fueled vigour.

It was behind them, close enough to hear, too close. The memories of crumbling fortifications and tanks being crushed like empty cans flooded his mind.

He didn’t look back at the woman, he just ran.

He didn’t know how long it took, it didn’t feel like long, but fear was strangely proficient at altering one’s perception of time, both stretching and compacting it at will. But there they were, hundreds of people crammed into one of the two bridges leading into the Panmunjon, he didn’t know which one.

He was worried, people kept pushing from behind while the crowds ahead remained stuck, probably the guards trying to keep order, probably.

But people kept pushing and screaming, the distant bellows no longer capable of silencing them. He didn't want to be crushed or trampled, so he too pushed ahead.

He didn’t intend for it, but the will of the mob was unpredictable and fickle, and as such he somehow found himself squeezed forward by the horde against his will, against what his survival instincts advised.

He found himself staring at a fellow soldier’s eyes. Sure, the man might have worn a different uniform (an enemy’s uniform) but he was just like Yong-Joon, both of their eyes equally filled with fear and confusion, the private was gripping a rifle with white-knucled hands. It reminded Ye of the gun still holstered at his hip.

“There’s soldiers amongst them! It’s a trap!” His fellow soldier of opposite allegiance shouted, no, screamed, in a familiar yet foreign accent, the fear in his eyes overriding his confusion.

And just like the bellows they had all been fleeing, he felt the bullets piercing his skin before he heard the rifle’s firing or the screams all around him.

**27th of July, 2008  
** **Dongjak District, Seoul, South Korea**

Tam wasn’t an idiot. Back when he was a kid his history class had dedicated an entire chapter to the last fifty year’s history of Kaiju attacks, unholy combinations of terroristic acts and natural disasters. “Humanity’s greatest struggle” some had called it.

He was no expert on the subject, (his mom had always told him that no man his age could be an expert on anything) but even he knew that roars and explosions so loud that they could be heard all the way from Pyeongtaek’s port a healthy 50 kilometres away could only mean one thing.

Footage had started flooding social media almost instantly, grainy and shaky footage of some enormous shape standing on top of a tanker, tearing into it like a lion on a buffalo’s back, photographs of its bipedal shape rampaging through some kind of industrial complex went viral seconds after being posted in forums and blogs. 

People were saying it was moving upstream towards Ansung, the media said that it was following the coastline towards Seoul. Others claimed that it somehow was up north in Pocheon.

It had all started while he was waiting to grab his sister from kindergarten. Suffice to say, he had pushed his way through the rabble of worried parents, grabbed Mok, and hightailed it. His mom could take care of herself.

The government was broadcasting that it had set up an evacuation hub in Incheon airport, so he had tried taking the subway there. A mistake.

Subways were closed and the roads were pure chaos, so no bus or taxi either. He had hoisted Mok on his back and ran west following the Han river’s southern bank as the landmark to guide him towards the airport. He hoped that the bridges would still be somewhat easy to transit closer to the evacuation hub.

They hadn’t gotten very far, whatever it was, it was fast.

Tam had been running across Dongjak when the Kaiju barreled into the area, a tank truck in its dinosaurian maw. It crushed and swallowed it like a crane eating fish.

It looked distinctly dinosaur-like, a long, hulking shape standing on two avian legs, with relatively short clawed forearms and an enormous head adorned with tusks and a single nose horn as tall as five men.

Tam froze for a few seconds before Mok’s crying re-booted his brain. He quickly ran towards a sturdy looking store-front. It was already filled with some many terrified bystanders that he and his sister were forced to huddle by the store’s window.

That gave them the privilege of a full view of the beast.

It trotted up to the wide highway which closely hugged the river, Tam noted that its tail sported four stake-like spikes like those of armoured dinosaurs. 

Then it began feasting, it plucked cars (some with people still inside) off the road like a chicken plucking bread crumbs off the ground. It tore the vehicles apart, usually by biting and shaking them until entire chunks tore off and went flying, chasing against buildings like brutally large shrapnel, or by clawing at the sturdier parts with its forelimbs.

It was only eating the back-halves of the cars, Tam noted.

The fuel tanks.

It was _eating_ **_fuel_**.

Then the bellows started, from the _opposite side_ of the river.

An equally colossal shape, quadrupedal, barreled _through_ the Asterium skyscraper, demolishing the building with a heart-stopping crash and a cloud of smoke and debris so large that it obscured the view of the northern bank in its entirety.

Except, of course, for the massive shape moving towards the riverbank. At first, Tam could only really differentiate the beast’s massive horns from the rest of its bulk, obscured by the clouds of atomized concrete and glass, but as it neared the riverbank, it made him wish it had stayed inside the dust cloud.

What at first had looked like a bull’s head, now looked more like a bull’s _skull_ someone had welded the teeth of a crocodile to. It had a strange gait, because while its hindlimbs were hoofed like a buffalo’s, its longer forelimbs ended in a pair of oversized, two-clawed fists, forcing it to walk on its knuckles like a gorilla. A mace-tipped short tail waved lazily behind it, like a cow batting flies away.

But what truly stole his breath was the beast’s hide. It looked like, no, it _was_ metal. An interlocking structure of scale armour, gunmetal steel and blue iron covered its back while shining copperesque metals covered its belly. It looked more like a cast metal sculpture than an animal, like an european war horse’s armour given life with a dark intent. And yet it moved with the natural fluidity of a flesh-and-bone animal.

It stood on a riverbank, a van-sized chunk of the skyscraper’s steel frame on its maw, it was _ruminating_ it, slowly tearing it apart into easy to swallow chunks.

Tam held his breath, the two Kaiju were staring at each other from their respective sides of the river, unmoving, if they fought, there’d be no chance to survive, much less flee, amongst the chaos and destruction they would cause. They were as good as dead.

Except, there really was no fight. The beast on their side simply picked a new car to dissect, the screams of the driver, still stuck inside, breaking the tense silence. The metallic colossus on the other side simply elected to bite into the bridge crossing the river, separating the structure’s steel frame from the cement and asphalt, like a bone being split so one could reach the marrow. 

It took time to gather the courage, but they eventually managed to sneak out of the area the gluttonous beats were so focused on methodically tearing apart.

Tam and his little sister boarded a plane two days later, by then, Seoul’s skyline had been visibly devoured and leveled. 

Their plane was headed to Ningbó, the ROC’s closest city.

They did not find their mother.

They never returned to the Korean peninsula either.

**Author's Note:**

> For those wondering, my interpretations of [Pulgasari](https://www.deviantart.com/transapient/art/Kaiju-Revolution-PULGASARI-802283994) and [Yonggary](https://www.deviantart.com/emilystepp/art/Yongarysaurus-775706331) were inspired by the two awesome pieces of fanart over on deviantart I just linked.  
> As always, here's the [Link](https://forms.gle/sbMyGVk4fEM64oVq8) to the poll I will be using to decide what the next instalment of this series will be! 
> 
> Thanks to my betas for their incredible work as always.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the story and I honestly appreciate all and any kudos or comments you may be gracious enough to gift me! I'm open to suggestions for other possible settings and Kaiju for me to use in the comments ;)
> 
> P.S. While I always post new content to the annex to coincide with new fics, I think that the section for Korea I added to the Asia chapter in the annex will be REALLY interesting in this one case and none of you should miss it ;)


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